Six Degrees of Eddie Brill

According to the warm up comedian for David Letterman, comedians are the truth tellers of the world.

Eddie Brill is the Kevin Bacon of the comedy world. The 49-year-old entertainer, who warms up the audience and works as Talent Coordinator for comedians on Late Show with David Letterman, is the man to know in the humor-sphere. Aside from his connections at Letterman (where he's also performed eight times), Brill's half hour Comedy Central Presents special is a favorite on the network's rotation, he teaches comedy workshops from the United States to Canada to England, and he serves as Humor Consultant for Reader's Digest. His friendships with comedians such as Sarah Silverman, Louis C.K., Mark Maron, and Dave Attell ensure that he is no more than six degrees from any name in comedy.

Brill's fixture as a staple of American humor allows him to stay abreast of comedic advancements. "Seventy five percent of people are sitting at home playing on the Internet, watching clips all two and a half to three minutes long," Brill says. "There's a starvation right now for content." His current project, creating online content for the Internet in conjunction with Gotham Comedy Club, is poised to lure people away from thinking of television as the place for quality stand up.

"The internet is where the world is going," he says. And Eddie Brill is going there, too.

As with many comedians, Brill's comedy story started in tragedy. His stepfather's death at a young age caused Brill, then a junior in high school, to examine the finality of life and how to deal with it. He put off plans to study math and science at MIT in pursuit of a more creative endeavor. An interest in radio and broadcast journalism led to enrollment at Emerson College in Boston, where Brill "met Denis Leary and Stephen Wright and a bunch of other very funny people. We formed a comedy group and it was very successful. All of a sudden I was in comedy."

Fortunately, his upbringing provided plenty of material for his new passion. Brill grew up a nice Jewish boy in Brooklyn listening to comics like George Carlin, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, Jonathan Winters, and Jackie Vernon. He even attended an Orthodox Hebrew School which began to highlight the tension between the Jewish world, and the world around him.

Such tensions are part of many comedians' make-up. "Jewish people and Black people are some of the best comics on the planet," Brill declares, listing Woody Allen, Richard Pryor, and Chris Rock as withstanding performers. He attributes the success to a battle against oppression. "And how do you fight out of it?" he asks. "By being funny."

"How do you battle against oppression? By being funny."

Brill's own struggle fuels his comedy. He often talks about religion on stage and isn't afraid to offend listeners. Jesus, he finds, always makes a provocative subject: "People think of him as a white guy but there's no way. Jesus was a Middle Eastern, dark-skinned Jew. Everyone was. And I say he wasn't born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania – he was born in the Middle East. He would have stood out like a sore thumb if he [were] a white guy." Brill shrugs off any audience aversion with the reassurance that it is not his job to placate listeners. He's out there to tell his opinion in a funny way and make the audience think.

It is that freedom that attracts him to comedy. In most jobs, Brill feels people can't be truthful. He gives as an example the four years after college he worked as an advertising agency copywriter, when he was paid to lie to consumers. Comedians, he says, are the truth-tellers of the world, people who are not only able but expected to expose the underbelly of honesty in a humorous, captivating way. "Once you get a laugh from telling the truth," Brill reveals, "you can never stop."

And truth, he finds, is universal. As such, he doesn't adapt his act to particular audiences. "You should write your routine as a human being," he suggests. "I think that just by being a human being, people will laugh." While Brill feels that tailoring material pigeonholes a comedian, he does concede that snippets of viewer-specific material can be infused into a routine. "If there's a Jewish audience," he gives as an example, "you can make little Jewish jokes." The act of comedy, though, trumps diversity.

His formula works well. Brill, who is based out of Manhattan, performs nationally at famed venues like Caroline's on Broadway and Radio City Music Hall as well as internationally in locations as varied as Ireland, Amsterdam, and Australia. He has appeared in nine movies including 30 Years to Life (with Tracy Morgan) and Dead Horse and lent his voice to the animated series' Dr. Katz and Science Court.

But it wasn't always easy. Brill's connections from Emerson helped him transition from copywriting to full-time comedian – a classmate who worked at the restaurant portion of the West Village's Paper Moon Club remembered him from the comedy group and asked if he would do a comedy night and set up shows. Brill had his first gig there on a Sunday in 1984, booking and hosting it into a successful weekend room where comics from all over the world won over New York.

Brill's debut as an audience warm-up comedian also came from college networking. A peer who worked for Saved by the Bell heard of the opening and suggested him for the position. Though he ultimately got fired for dressing down an 11-year-old heckler whose antics annoyed the viewers and disrupted his show ("I actually saved the audience by doing what I did," he maintains), other warm up opportunities followed: The Dana Carvey Show, Madigan Men, This is Your Life. And then, of course, Letterman.

Brill's ability – and eagerness – to mentor young and seasoned comics as they take their talent to the next level helps expand his role on the world's stage. This is particularly true of the new talent he brings to late night television such as Roy Wood, Jr., Jeff Caldwell, and Pete Correale. "It was my dream to do the Letterman show," he explains, "so every time these comedians do the show, I know it's their dream … I know how to help them get there, to be comfortable, to be poised."

Another way he helps shape the next generation of comics is with his workshops. He conducts these classes with the mindset that comedy cannot be taught but it can be work-shopped. "You can be everyone's eyes and ears," he explains. "You don't know what you do and I don't know what I do but I can tell you what you do and help you see." The classes help students hone their comedic writing, performing, and timing skills and instill the roots for a regimented work ethic. Without nonstop writing and performance, Brill says, a comic will fall apart.

Brill's upward progression emerged from following the same advice he gives to hopeful comics: Don't be afraid to make mistakes because failure can help drive a comic if he lets it. He has created that precise situation for himself, one in which he melds the knowledge of his past with his goals for the future.

"It's not like my life's all peaches," Brill says. But, to outsiders, it seems at least a bowl of very funny cherries.

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!